- It’s clear that very soon each of us will have our own AI assistant that will perform various boring tasks for us. But for this, it will need to be able to access various services on our behalf, the ones we use. But how?
- Will we really give it all our usernames and passwords for these services? It doesn’t seem entirely safe ☹️ However, here’s an example of how to make a secure solution for this and raise $6.5 million for it right away, even before fully launching.
- And the coolest thing is that on a similar principle, you can take and disrupt all traditional marketplaces—turning them into a platform for AI bot communication. So, what can you start with or what else can you do instead right away to create your billion-dollar startup:
Project essence
Anon is creating a “platform for integrating the AI internet.”
Sounds fancy, but it’s not clear at all 😉 So it’s better to see how it works with a simple example.
For example, a person asks their AI assistant to remind a colleague about tomorrow’s event in a personal message on Instagram. To send such a message, the AI assistant needs to access this person’s account. But how? Does the person have to give their AI assistant their login and password for the account? That’s not safe at all.
If this AI assistant uses the Anon platform, it can connect to Instagram on behalf of the person without receiving their login and password. Once the AI assistant recognizes that it needs to connect to Instagram to complete the task, it will show the person a window to connect to Instagram through Anon – where the person must enter their own login and password.
After successfully entering the login and password, a connection is established between the AI assistant and Instagram. Now the AI assistant can send a message on Instagram, receive a response, and transmit its content back to the AI assistant’s window.
The established connection between the AI assistant and Instagram is retained so that the person does not need to enter their login and password every time the AI assistant needs to do something on Instagram. The person can disconnect this connection at any time in the settings of the AI assistant – actually in the settings of Anon, embedded in the AI assistant
In the same way, the AI assistant can connect to any set of services needed to complete tasks assigned by the person.
The main charm is that nothing needs to be embedded in Instagram or any other external service for this. Anon only needs to be embedded in the AI assistant, which must be able to connect to third-party services.
This becomes possible because Anon is developing a set of modules for integration with popular internet services.
If a specific AI assistant needs to connect to a specific third-party service, the developer of such an AI assistant can develop the required integration module using the Anon function library – and embed it in their AI assistant.
The startup has only 10 integrations with third-party services ready so far, only one library for sending and receiving messages in these services has been developed, and the pilot integration of Anon into the AI assistants of the platform’s first clients is underway.
But even at such an early stage, Anon managed to raise its first investment of $6.5 million.
What’s interesting
There’s this popular service called Plaid, which has developed modules for integrating with almost all American banks and financial services. Developers of third-party services that need integration of their applications with their users’ bank, investment, and other accounts can use these modules provided by Plaid. Developers pay Plaid for using these modules.
In 2020, Visa planned to acquire Plaid for $5.3 billion, which was twice its valuation at the time, but the deal was blocked by the US antitrust commission. A year later, Plaid raised new investments, increasing its valuation to $13.4 billion!
It seems like Anon is aiming to replicate the same story but in the world of AI. However, the founder himself compares Anon to libraries that allow users to sign in and register on third-party services through Google, Facebook, and similar popular services.
Although the analogy with Plaid seems more logical to me. Especially considering the popularity and valuation growth of Plaid 😉
It also reminds me of the startup AgentsForce, which I wrote about last summer when it was still called Octo. AgentsForce went through Y Combinator last year with another AI bot for customer support.
However, AgentsForce claims that their AI bot can handle many more customer requests than other ordinary AI bots. Not because their AI technology is superior to others, but because their bot can independently initiate communication with other people and perform actions in corporate platforms—not just respond to customer inquiries.
For example, if a customer asks AgentsForce’s bot, “Where is my order?” the bot can check the corporate platform to see which delivery service has the order, contact a person (or another bot) from that delivery service, find out the problem and when it will be resolved, and relay the information to the customer. And if the customer remains dissatisfied, the bot can notify the delivery service of the order cancellation, update the order status in the order database, and initiate a refund to the customer.
In other words, to successfully solve customer problems, an AI customer support bot should not exist “in a vacuum”—it should actively interact with the surrounding world, other people, other bots, and other services.
And this is true for any AI bot—including AI assistants. A good AI assistant should be able to perform tasks on behalf of a person in any service for which the person has given it the appropriate permission. Permissions can vary—e.g., read-only or read-and-write.
But this will be impossible if AI assistants cannot securely connect to such services with the necessary permissions—which they can now do with the Anon platform. So, Anon is a key factor for AI assistants to become “good” assistants 😉
Where to Run
Well, first of all, today’s Anon is at such an early stage that you can still compete for a place like Plaid in the AI internet 😉 So, that’s the first possible direction of movement.
Secondly, if you look at the same story from a slightly different angle, you can see prospects in creating protocols and platforms for communication between AI bots. Because very soon, everyone will have an AI assistant, and every service will have an AI bot—and they will need to somehow communicate with each other.
A rough example. Classic marketplaces may soon turn into a platform for AI bot communication. The user’s AI assistant will find products on this platform that match the user’s request, communicate with the bots of the stores to ask additional questions about the product specifications, check availability, delivery times, and negotiate prices. After that, it will provide the user with ready options to choose from, and then communicate with the bot of the selected seller to monitor delivery and resolve any issues that arise.
Creating modules in the style of Anon for integration with each store on the marketplace would be a nightmare ☹️ It’s much easier to create a unified protocol that each AI bot developed by every internet store wanting to list on the marketplace should adhere to—so that it has all the necessary functions, and the communication format is standardized to eliminate possible misunderstandings. Additionally, a builder can (and should) be created where internet stores could quickly and easily create such bots.
For product marketplaces, this would be simply convenient. But for service marketplaces, where everything needs to be clarified with everyone all the time, this could be a game-changer!
Service marketplaces are a completely separate interesting topic. This market is huge, but it’s still poorly digitized. Therefore, current service marketplaces are essentially directories of business cards of craftsmen and companies—with each of them needing to be painfully contacted every time ☹️
Nevertheless, this market has been targeted by, for example, the French startup Scnd, which I wrote about last fall. Also, interesting approaches to the theme of services can be noted in the startup reviews of Lottie and Carma.
It’s possible that, not yet fully born, the right service marketplaces could immediately start turning into platforms for AI bot communication. And this could be a significant push that launches this topic into space 😉
So, this is another interesting direction in which you can run today to create your billion-dollar startup.
About the Company
Anon
Website: anon.com
Latest Funding Round: $6.5M, 24.04.2024
Total Investments: $6.5M, Rounds: 1